Write a summary of the plot .

The story is about a girl, Sarah, ten years old,  who was Jewish in the Second World War. One day, her parents and her get arrested, but just before that she locks her four-year-old brother Michel in a cupboard to protect him. Sarah thinks they will be back within a few hours, and she will release him then. Only, she doesn’t get back. She is being held in  the Vélodrome d'Hiver, a stadium that was once used to hold bicycling races. The stadium was never meant to hold as many people as it does now, so the toilets and food and water supplies are no-where near good. Sarah’s worries keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes by. Later, she gets transported to Drancy, and then to Auswitsch. In Auswitsch she makes a friend, Rachel, and together they try to escape. With help of a guard that Sarah used to know, they do, but Rachel gets very ill, and Sarah needs to leave her with a family. The family helps Sarah to go home, but when she does, and opens the door of the cupboard, she finds Michels dead body.

The other story is about a woman whose name is Julia. Julia is an American reporter who lives in France. She is asked to write a report about the Vélodrome d'Hiver. When she digs into the story, she finds out that it has some connection to her. Her husband’s family namely lived in the apartment that they are going to live in, but she also finds the story of a young girl there, Sarah, who locked her brother in to keep him safe. Julia becomes obsessed with Sarah’s story and tries to find out everything that happened. Eventually, she finds out that Sarah got married, she had a baby and she died not long after that. Julia believes that Sarah didn’t accidently drive her car into a crash, but deliberately. Not long after that, Julia and her husband decide that they should get a divorce. They don’t move in in the apartment, but Julia goes back to New York, where she gets a second child, whom she calls Sarah.

Explain the title, use quotes from the novel.

Sarah’s key obviously refers to the key she uses to lock the cupboard that Michel is in. She keeps it with her all the time, wherever she goes.

“ ‘You still know me, right.’

(…) She got the key out of her pocket and showed it to him.

‘Do you remember my little brother?’

He nodded.

‘You need to let me go, monsieur. He is in Paris. Alone. See, I locked him in a cupboard, because, I thought…’”

In French and Dutch the book is called ‘Her name was Sarah’ and I think that refers to both the little girl off course, but also the fact that you know so little of her, and that you can only know so little, but at least you know her name. There are a lot of victims that we will never know the names off, but at least we do off this one.

Discuss the themes of your novel.

Holocaust: The story of Sarah takes place during the holocaust. She is Jewish, and there for a potential victim of the Germans.

Looking for the unknown: Julia is a journalist who wants to know everything about everything, so when she gets a new story, a new mystery, she definitely tries to unrelish it.

What is the setting of the story? When and where does it take place. How do you know? Can you say something about the social/cultural setting?

The story takes place in France. A part of Sarah’s story also takes place in Poland, Auswitsch. From Sarah’s point of view, you get a lot of descriptions, like ‘The ground was dirty, but not a kind of dirty she had ever seen.’ Sarah is new to a lot of things, so she describes is with great amazement.

The apartment is very important for the story, because both Sarah’s and Julia’s lives revolve around it. Sarah cannot come back to it, but she feels like she has to, and she feels like she is responsible for her brother’s death. Julia wants to go and live there, but then she also finds out that it is the scenery from the story that she is investigating.

Is the story told with flashbacks or flash forwards, or is the story chronological throughout?

The story is told with both flashbacks and flash forwards. Because Julia looks for Sarah’s story. So throughout Julia’s story, you read Sarah’s. But within both stories a chronological order is used. You first find out how the two people live now, and towards the end you see how they evolved and deal with a lot of very difficult situations.

Describe the main characters. How do they develop in the story; why do they say/do what they say/do, what is the relevance of their actions to the story?

Sarah Starzynski: Sarah is a Jewish girl who gets arrested during World War Two for being Jewish. She locks her brother in a cupboard to protect him, but fails to get him out alive. I think that her childish believe in that she can still save him saves herself, because it is that drive that helps her escape the concentration camp. Sarah grows up too quick, because she gets separated from her family, and she feels responsible for the little children around her. After the war, another family turns out to live in her old apartment. She grows old ‘a broken woman’ and never really recovers from the horrors that she has seen.

Julia Jarmond: Julia is an American woman who has always preferred France over America. She has married a French man, Bertrand, whom she has gotten a child with. Recently, she has wanted to move, and now they decided to move into Bertrand’s grandmothers apartment, since she is going away to a home. Julia has just had a miscarriage, and she thinks her husband is cheating on her. All in all, she has quite some problems. Then her boss puts her on the trail of a girl who got arrested during a razzia, and she becomes obsessed with it. Later in the book, she finds out Sarah and Michel lived in the house she is about to move into, and she decides to not move there. She and her husband divorce, but she finds out she is pregnant. In the last chapter you find out  Julia moved to New York and had a baby, whom she named Sarah.

From whose perspective is the story told? How do you know and why did the writer choose this point of view?

The story is told from both Sarah’s and Julia’s point of view. I think that the writer used this point because it is really easy to sympathise with the book. You are inside the head of the head character, so  it is hard not to feel sorry for her when i.e. Sarah finds her brother, or when Julia finds out her marriage is over.

Also, I think that the writer used two people to write the story is because Sarah is a child an Julia is an adult. The things that Julia learns about Sarah, are being reviewed very different, because they are in a different life-zone. Also, it happens to Sarah, so Julia is just an outsider and that will probably cause her to see it different.

What is the most exciting part of the book and why?

I think, for me that was when you find out that Sarah escaped. Whilst she is trying to escape, a guard shows up and holds her back. But Sarah does not back down so easily. She knows the officer, and she felt very betrayed by him, because she thought the Germans were against them, but it turns out, their own police officers also are. This particular officer she found very nice, and whenever Sarah was not treated right, his head became red of shame. Sarah finds a way to smooth-talk her way out of the camp, while that should not be possible.

I also found it very exciting when I found out what had happened to Sarah. She married and got a child, but she never really recovered from the war. The way Julia named her child after Sarah, was a pretty homage.

Give your own opinion of the book.

I really liked the book. Off course it was not very happy, and I really had a hard time wrapping my head around the horrors that happened, it was a beautiful book.

The way Sarah was described was really amazing. Everything that happens, makes her more curious about what happens next. And even though she suspects that her brother is dead, she never gives up trying to find him. I really admire that in her. I think she also found out later on how her parents and a lot of other people were killed, because that is, I believe a thing that she did not see (luckily).

Julia also is a fighter. She does not give up her story, because for her it  becomes more than just a story. Sarah comes to life in front of her eyes. Julia is a strong, independent woman, who knows what she wants. That is a good quality for a human, especially for a journalist.

The way those two characters were described and really came to life was very astonishing, and it made the book even better.